Pubslush: Crowdfunding Just For Books

Authors wanting to crowdfund the publication of their book often turn to Kickstarter, the darling of the crowdfunding scene. One of the earliest successful crowdfunding sites and now boasting a huge community, Kickstarter is the obvious place to go if you want to raise money for a print run, but as a general platform, there’s nothing specifically baked into Kickstarter that supports authors’ needs.

That’s where Pubslush comes in. Run by mother-daughter team Hellen and Amanda L Barbara, this American start-up is focused on providing crowdfunding services tailored to the needs of authors, agents, self-publishers and small presses, which aren’t necessarily the same as those of technologists, film makers and musicians.crowdfunding marketing

There are two main differences between Pubslush and other crowdfunding sites, the first of which is that Pubslush offer its project owners “personalised, one-on-one advice, targeted for books,” said Amanda L. Barbara, Pubslush’s vice president.

“The author gets an author relations co-ordinator and access to a team that helps create the rewards. We don’t want an author to be intimidated [by the complexity of crowdfunding] so, for a small fee of $25 [deducted from your earnings only if your project is successful], our team helps build the rewards. So it’s not just upload and submit, we’re a part of the process.”

The author relations co-ordinator will talk to the author via Skype, for example, a service that Barbara says is “getting positive reviews from author-users, who are receiving a service over and above what they expected.”crowdfunding advertising

It will certainly be a challenge for Pubslush to maintain that level of involvement as it scales up, but there is a lot of sense in helping authors make good decisions about how big of a goal to set, how to market their campaign, etc, as it will results a smaller pool of more successful projects. The personal touch also helps reduce the risks that a project won’t deliver, as the team can help authors tackle issues like fulfilment and nudge any who seem to be falling by the wayside. Authors are, of course, legally liable to their supporters once their project succeeds, but as Barbara points out, and Kickstarter illustrates, people do believe that the onus falls on the platform as much as the individual project owners, so it behooves Pubslush to try to reduce the risk of backing a project.As you’d expect, there is a fairly standard menu of rewards, such as ebooks and print books, but they also like to be creative, drawing inspiration from who the author is and what their topic is. The co-ordinator will also give advice on things like timing, for example “no one is successful in December”, so they encourage people to put their project off until January, instead working with them to get their marketing tactics honed and find at least ten to twenty supporters who’ll kick off the campaign when it launches.indiegogo marketing

The second difference is that once a crowdfunding campaign is successful, the ‘fund’ button morphs into a ‘buy’ button so that anyone late to the project can easily find out where the book is for sale. Hooking into Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, “the ‘buy’ button allows an author to be a part of the community forever, not just while you’re crowdfunding,” said Barbara. As the service matures, Barbara hopes that Pubslush will become not just a crowdfunding platform, but also a place to discover published books that people can buy straight away.

For authors, Pubslush is a good deal, taking only 4 percent of raised funds, and has settled on a hybrid model somewhere in between the ‘keep what you raise’ and ‘all or nothing’ standards: Pubslush allows authors to set a project minimum, below which the book can’t happen, but they also set a goal, the amount that they would like to raise. This gives people a target to aim for, but ensures that there’s a clear line below which the project fails and no one is charged. Once a project hits its minimum, it works on a ‘keep what you raise’ basis, so if you set your minimum at $5,000 and your goal at $10,000 but raise $6,000, you get to keep $6,000 (minus fees).kickstarter marketing

The company is also offering services to publishers, Pubslush Pro, and companies such as print-on-demand services, Pubslush Custom. The Pro option gives agents and publishers crowdfunding and analytics tools to allow them to more clearly understand their market and gauge demand. Pubslush Custom is a white label offering which allows companies to run campaigns under their own brand, collect user data and earn a percentage of funds raised.Pubslush began life as a hybrid publishers-crowdfunding platform, where users would “post their book excerpt and summary onto Pubslush, and if they received enough donations from readers, Pubslush would pick up their works and publish them,” write’s TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook. When they realised that authors weren’t aware that they were locking themselves into a Pubslush contract by uploading their work, Pubslush decided to change tack and provide the open crowdfunding service that their users wanted.

Another option, Pubslush Premium will provide companies with the ability to create their own membership community, increasing engagement and making the most of social media.

Pubslush Premium “allows a bit more brand recognition” for publishers, says Barbara. “There’s no brand loyalty between readers and publishers”, she says, but Pubslush Premium will allow publishers to “track who your readers are. Readers can become members [of your community], and people who support your book automatically become members too, so publishers can export that reader list and have a database of people who are early adopters, want to support early on. This is a pre-publication tool, a marketing tool to use before you hit the publish button. If can get 1,000 readers before the book is live, then you can get higher rankings” and more reviews on sites like Amazon or Goodreads.kickstarter project

I think the little tweaks that Pubslush has made to the crowdfunding model really are beneficial. The hands-on help, the fund/buy button, and the minimum/maximum goal levels all go towards providing a service that not only helps authors negotiate what is really quite a difficult process, but also work long-term as a marketing and community building tool.